


i felt the chamber of your pistol kissing my jaw

by patrokla



Category: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7818994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Omar’s never taken his threats seriously. Johnny doesn’t know if he loves him or hates him for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i felt the chamber of your pistol kissing my jaw

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I literally just wrote this, after rewatching the movie yet again, because I have many feelings about every single scene in that movie, but especially the last few. Title from 'that hippolytine feeling' by tMG.

He’d forgotten what it was like to be outnumbered. Perhaps he’d never really known; despite all the marches and broken bottles he'd always had someone at his back, with fists, or wood, or a flick knife. He'd had his own people.  
  
There’s no one now. He’s alone, beaten, back ground against concrete and tarmac, face bloodied. Genghis holds him tightly, and he won’t stop struggling, won’t stop fighting, but the hands that he once took for granted are tearing him apart and there is no one else. He’s alone.  
  
And then the hands are gone. He can’t hear, can barely see for the blood in his eyes, and some rational part of him knows it’s Omar tearing him away, Omar shielding him, but he can’t help it, everything hurts, and he flinches away pathetically at the feeling of a body pressed against him, at the warmth of skin.  
  
—  
  
Omar’s panicking, Johnny recognizes this, knows it in the incessant stream of prattle about fights, things Johnny wants to forget, things he wants to leave far, far behind. Things that always seem to catch up to him.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” Omar says, and Johnny wants to hit him, wants to snap at him like an animal. He’s not beautiful. He’s useful, he’s a waste of fucking oxygen, he’s a disappointment, he’s tough. He is never beautiful.  
  
“Don’t touch me,” he snarls, and Omar, Omar who was even worse at school than Johnny, too stupid to take a hint, to get a fucking clue - Omar doesn’t listen.  
  
Omar’s never taken his threats seriously. Johnny doesn’t know if he loves him or hates him for it.  
  
—  
  
The bruises heal slowly. The cracked ribs, even slower. Omar is all smiles, all laughs, all jokes spilling out of his mouth and Johnny knows he’s scared, scared, scared.  
  
Johnny’s scared, too. He’s beginning to sympathise with Omar’s father, who worried himself into the bottom of a bottle, into a day’s worth of stopped trains.  
  
If his old friends come back, if they search Omar out and Johnny isn’t there, if they restrain him and make him watch as they cut Omar open-  
  
—  
  
The laundrette is closed, a small mercy in a sea of fear and chaos. They’re fixing it, slowly, but Salim is in the hospital and Nasser is gone, and no one is demanding money from them. Johnny makes Omar take nights off. They sleep in the same bed for the first time since they were children, and Johnny’s ribs ache in the mornings because Omar holds him too tightly at night, but he doesn’t mind. He’s missed the warmth of skin against his own.


End file.
